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Anti-Unix Site Hosted on a FreeBSD Box...

Several sites have reported on this already, but not with the flair and panache that 2CPU.com regulars are accustomed to. So here goes: In an article written a few days ago by CNET, it became apparent that Microsoft and Unisys were joining together in a collective marketing campaign to basically undermine Unix (which is the "Big Box" OS of choice of several competitors).

Unisys is spending $25 million on the campaign, spokeswoman Pasha Ray said. Microsoft is adding funding of its own but declined to say how much.

Interesting. Furthermore, it appears a website has been constructed to aid them in this regard. "Wehavethewayout.com" shows the Microsoft/Unisys initiative. This is where the fun begins: Let's cruise over to NSI and it's marvelous whois function:

The site www.wehavethewayout.com is running Rapidsite/Apa-1.3.14 (Unix) FrontPage/4.0.4.3 mod_ssl/2.7.1 OpenSSL/0.9.5a on FreeBSD.

Hehe, this warms my heart. Of course, this is not something we're unaccustomed to with Microsoft (Hotmail.com anyone?).

I'm sure Windows 2000 Datacenter would run reasonably well with 32 processors and 64GB of memory. Apparently Unisys boasts a record of 26,000 concurrent users on one of these boxes in some benchmark. My question would be this: How long will the box run under this kind of load. Oh -wait- a second, it doesn't matter! That's why they advocate the use of the 4-node clustering service. Then you can buy yet another "Big Box" and more Datacenter licenses to ensure you have zero downtime on your mission critical application (By having an alternating, semi-regular reboot schedule). Lovely!

Whenever I think "Big Box", I'm reminded of that IBM commercial where the suits are walking through the empty datacenter previously jam packed with servers only to discover that the geek had moved it all to a single IBM box running Linux. Now -that- my friends is advertising. :-)

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Originally posted by jupp I know of big german marketplace where Netcraft insisted on MS-IIS while it was (and is) running on an AS/400. I just checked, and now they report it correctly.

I don't really see how it could be wrong. I was under the assumption that netcraft simply had some sort of automated script which telnets to the webserver in question on port 80 and queries version/platform information that way and then formats the output all pretty with links.

I'm sure my amigo MalHavoc could explain in greater detail how it exactly works, step by step.[url="http://www.2cpu.com"][size=1]2CPU.com[/url] - Because two are always better than one![url="http://www.jimkirk.org"]jimkirk.org[/url] - Not a Myth any Longer. Just a Dad.[/size]

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Phyz
Registered User

Posts: 101
Joined: 2001-08-23

#14801 Posted on: 04/02/2002 08:05 PM
I think IBM should just start a "We have a better way out" campaign, just to put M$ and Unysis to shame...the market has matured and most administrators (I hope) will have enough common sense to use a *nix based network for mission critical tasks. Most large companies are hypocritical: Anand had an article up about a year ago about how AMD runs mostly Sun servers, because the solution is cheaper than installing and maintaining their own servers....

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questionlp
the Cowardly Tech

Posts: 323
Joined: 2002-02-14

#14806 Posted on: 04/02/2002 10:07 PM
It looks like the "wehavethewayout.com" has moved to a completely different server that is running IIS 5.0 on Win2K. The old address, 198.63.57.204, is still running FreeBSD and a version of Apache... whereas the new server, 130.94.214.143, is running Win2K.

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Jim_
Administrator

Posts: 3574
Joined: 2000-03-15

#14808 Posted on: 04/02/2002 11:39 PM
Interesting. I wonder what the exact motivation behind the change was.[url="http://www.2cpu.com"][size=1]2CPU.com[/url] - Because two are always better than one![url="http://www.jimkirk.org"]jimkirk.org[/url] - Not a Myth any Longer. Just a Dad.[/size]

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cRock
FreeBSD SMP Daemon

Posts: 122
Joined: 2001-11-02

#14809 Posted on: 04/03/2002 12:10 AM
I don't really think it's a change. Unisys marketing has never really touted the ES 7000 as a SCO Unix box despite their quiet partnership. MS gives Unisys untold millions to finance the platform and push Win2k datacenter. They'd be fools to risk alienating MS by pushing SCO too vocally. It's not like they're selling a bunch of ES 7000s anyway, what with Dell, and HP-Q breaking their agreements to resell them. Unisys needs all of the marketing muscle they can muster, be it from MS or elsewhere.

Unisys also continues to be unflappingly rude when responding to any Linux/*BSD developers with regard to support for the ES 7000. That should help to bolster their image as unix haters ;-)Tiger MP + 2 x Athlon 1.2 Ghz: FreeBSD; BP6 + 2 x Celeron 433@488: W2K; 60 Mhz Apple Performa 6116 CD: MkLinux

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nipster
NOT a WarMonger

Posts: 1839
Joined: 2001-09-12

#14810 Posted on: 04/03/2002 01:11 AM
"Whenever I think "Big Box", I'm reminded of that IBM commercial where the suits are walking through the empty datacenter previously jam packed with servers only to discover that the geek had moved it all to a single IBM box running Linux. Now -that- my friends is advertising"

I will admit that is a clever commercial, but having worked in datacenters for years, i just laughed when i saw it. They migrated all that stuff on a whim without notifying anyone

yea, ok...

But yes, it is a very clever commercial, makes good tv, even the linux IBM basketball commercials are pretty good

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Jim_
Administrator

Posts: 3574
Joined: 2000-03-15

#14812 Posted on: 04/03/2002 01:51 AM
Where I work, we actually run several life critical applications on NT4 (I know, scary...) The boxes get pounded by thousands upon thousands of concurrent connections.

What do we do to ensure flawless uptime regardless of OS death or hardware failure? Load-Balancing Clusters, of course. Hence my comments on the front page. It's not the most cost-effective solution (licensing, hardware, admin staff), but it -does- work.[url="http://www.2cpu.com"][size=1]2CPU.com[/url] - Because two are always better than one![url="http://www.jimkirk.org"]jimkirk.org[/url] - Not a Myth any Longer. Just a Dad.[/size]

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nipster
NOT a WarMonger

Posts: 1839
Joined: 2001-09-12

#14813 Posted on: 04/03/2002 04:18 AM
well, i know what you mean, fu*kin nt boxes seem to multiply like rabbits in that sense...

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jupp
Registered User

Posts: 76
Joined: 2001-11-10

#14818 Posted on: 04/03/2002 07:48 PM

Originally posted by Jim_ I don't really see how it could be wrong. I was under the assumption that netcraft simply had some sort of automated script which telnets to the webserver in question on port 80 and queries version/platform information that way and then formats the output all pretty with links.

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BBA
Resident Modding Freak

Posts: 1390
Joined: 2000-02-12

#14819 Posted on: 04/04/2002 01:08 AM
I was told they had the site on their advertising companys server and then moved it to the MS server farm later. They seem to have had DNS issues with the name not propagating correctly, because you could access the site with two different IP addresses ( same page on different servers ).

Right now you can't get to either server, both prompt for login...so the servers are still up, but the page has been removed from public access.BBA

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C.A.Shirley
Registered User

Posts: 1070
Joined: 2001-02-28

#14820 Posted on: 04/05/2002 04:05 PM
The wehavethewayout.com site seems to be up again, but if you ask me, it looks like a feeble count of attempted FUD.

Oh, and by the way, I just recently ended up with my first ever copy of a M$ OS on a computer that I own personally. Windows X-Plode came bundled with my new laptop. I've squeezed it down to 5 GB partition, but it is there... Linux works just fine, and I guess that BSD would too. I haven't tried loading BeOS yet though. Maybe tomorrow...
"Chicks dig giant robots!"

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Wedge
Registered User

Posts: 0
Joined: 2008-09-22

#14821 Posted on: 04/06/2002 06:24 AM
Heh, I like to munge the header files when I compile apache, I have a couple servers reporting themselves as Microsoft IIS 5.0.